Moments before his MedStar helicopter crashed onto the golf course of the Armed Forces Retirement Home, pilot Darryl Johnson sent a desperate call for help, officials said Wednesday.
“It was, ‘Mayday! Mayday!’ Then it went down,” MedStar Health spokeswoman Paula Faria said. “I don’t believe there was anything more.”
Johnson, a 58-year-old veteran helicopter and airplane pilot, was one of three injured when the air ambulance crashed in Northwest late Tuesday afternoon.
Patient Steven Gaston, 51, who already was in critical condition as he was being flown to Washington Health Center, died at 11:45 p.m. Tuesday.
On Wednesday, doctors were still trying to determine whether his death was caused by the crash.
Authorities also began the arduous process of finding out what brought the chopper down. The National Transportation Safety Board was looking for a warehouse to store the twisted wreckage and was gathering evidence from the crash.
Johnson broke his back in the wreck and hadn’t been interviewed by investigators, NTSB spokesman Paul Schlamm said.
Also injured in the crash were MedStar paramedic David Martin, 33, and flight engineer Nancy Vanderweele, 39.
It was the first time in almost 40,000 flights that a MedStar helicopter had crashed, MedStar’s Faria said, and employees are reeling.
“It’s a small community,” she said, “so everybody feels this.”
Pilot Darryl Johnson’s flight record
» 38 years of flying experience
» 15,000 flight hours
» 1,000 flight hours inEurocopter EC 135-P1
» Former Army aviator, shot down in Vietnam
Source: CJ Systems Aviation Group
